I couldn't even make it through half the episode. Felt like your run of the mill anime and it didn't feel anything like Pokemon. I was afraid I would feel like this, but watching this proved it. Ash being away took away any feeling of me watching Pokemon at all. I will say that Liko is likeable, but what I watched isn't Pokemon. The music is wrong, the characters are wrong, the story is wrong, the animation is wrong.

It's hard to pinpoint exactly what your issue is with this episode when you're just saying that everything about it is wrong, but based on how you equated this episode to a "run of the mill anime", I'm gonna assume that you just really dislike the school setting. Which is.. somewhat understandable, there's definitely been plenty of those kinds of anime in recent years, but I don't think there's anything wrong with Pokemon going for that formula.

We've already had a taste of it with the Sun and Moon season of the show, and I personally enjoyed the comfy atmosphere in that series. The Scarlet and Violet games also placed a big emphasis on its school setting, so I think it makes sense that the anime is doing something similar. Plus, you're making it sound like the school setting makes the show feel generic, when going on adventures is also a very common premise in many anime, so I don't think the "run of the mill anime" descriptor means much here.

Pokemon is supposedly about going on daring adventures alone.

And this episode does actually point to that aspect several times, even though most of the episode took place in a school setting.
  • Liko's a foreign student from Paldea going to a school in Kanto, which already highlights her attempt at adventuring outside of her home region. Throughout this episode we can see how difficult it is for her to interact with others around her due to her social anxiety, so in a way, her attempts at going outside her comfort zone and overcoming her anxiety feels like a "daring adventure" of its own.
  • Another major highlight of this episode is Sprigatito's free-spiritedness and how it's slowly pushing Liko to go beyond the confines of the school and out into the world. The immediate first thing the cat does upon meeting Liko was leading her outside of her classroom. Throughout the episode we see Liko constantly chasing the cat around the school and trying to understand its behavior, to the point that they now have a secret training spot outside the school that they constantly sneak away to. This all culminates into several moments at the end of this episode and in the next episode, where Sprigatito helps Liko to stand up for herself and follow her heart's desire.
Again, I understand if you dislike how the main character isn't immediately thrown into an adventure, but if you're willing to stick around, the show does actually seem to be heading in that direction instead of just sticking with the school setting. It's just taking its time to build up to it.

Watch the first episode, and then watch this. Felt like two completely different entities. Had they done new characters, but presented this episode like the first episode of Pokemon, then maybe it could have been something special. But this is your basic generic anime

On the contrary, I'd argue that the show being given a fresh start only to do the exact same thing that it did during the very beginning would've made this new series feel a lot less special and made me question why the fresh start was necessary to begin with. I'm glad to see that they're trying something new with this series, while still keeping to the core themes of Pokemon that made the show feel so enjoyable for me (going out on adventures and seeing a world where people and Pokemon seamlessly coexist with each other).

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